“Thalos will hear of this,” the interloper promised, unaware his song had already ended in horror. “You have hours, exile. Thalos will turn this trench to silt before you can breed her.”
Nyx’s grin only grew, for without any effort at all, the filaments pierced scale and muscle, dragging the otherPelagorndown with a startled shriek that bubbled as it left his doomed lips.
“Oh, she’s already been bred,Thalassari,” he hummed, shifting to slither from the shelf. Swimming closer to watch the struggle of his parasitic reef when it sent thousands of tiny barbs into muscle. Siphoning what it wanted from the struggling male’s blood and bone. “She progresses fast enough that even I, First Sovereign King of the Black Sea, struggle to prepare for my bride to drown. But here you are,” he said, and laughed when the other thrashed and struggled even as his flesh was sloughed from bone. “Bringing gifts for my coronation. An example will be made,” he mocked. “Your bones shall be used to tether my bride at my side. In death, you shall keep her open and ready for my knot. Your scales saved for decoration that will be used to please my bride as she is bred before my court.”
“Vile fucking—” He tried to scream, but the sound rose as a wall of bubbles. Fragile and cut short, for the Raskoril encircledthe interloper’s throat in a milky curl that sent blood misting through the black. Polyps glowing an excited, violent blue, they claimed theThalassarisong as tribute.
Nyx thrummed, letting the Resonance rattle as the other’s body was stretched taut. Purring as he watched joints burst and viscera spill in garish ribbons of fetid gore.
Lingering, savoring the display as his fledgling reef swelled against the bedrock. Each crunch echoed his savage pleasure as his unspoken whim was obeyed.
And in return, the Raskoril feasted.
Flesh melted to pale jelly.
Blood siphoned into the heart of hardening coral.
Until there was nothing left but scale and bone. Gleaming white. A cage clutched in coral fist.
“Perfection,” Nyx hummed, brushing a finger along one of the ivory ribs. “You’ll be given true purpose.”
Satiated, the Raskoril quieted. Its glow dimmed as it worked to digest the prize it had been given.
Nyxarion inspected the bone lattice—the curve of the spine, the robust cage of rubs—and saw her within it. Thrashing against her inevitable surrender, perhaps. But kept safe. Hidden from what would come.
He knew it now.
Thalos.
The open-water king.
Time was running out.
And this would be her cradle.
Her throne.
Lingering a moment as exhaustion spread through his limbs, he pressed a hand to the surface and commanded the Raskoril to obey, letting it taste his intention through his blood. “For you,” his voice rippled. “So no false king may touch what is already mine.”
CHAPTER 16
The sun woke her.
Pitiless heat. Merciless and cruel, it beat down upon her face where she lay sprawled on the beach, baking her into a crust of sand and dried fluids. Thigh throbbing where she’d been barbed with yet another dose of venom.
Kore groaned. Her voice a soundless, hollow rasp. And, sucking a breath through chapped and flaking lips, she cringed back from the harsh glare. Pulling her left arm from where it was glued to the beach, she tried to shield her eyes from the searing pain.
But her skin… it was caked in a thick layer of sand. Itchy and tight. Stiff and clumpy.
The flash of clenched knuckles flicked through her memory, and she remembered the ropes of burning white. The obscene sounds he’d made as he’d sprayed his mark across her skin… as she’d cupped that cooling seed in trembling hands and…
It clung to her thighs, her belly… her breasts—everywhere the ropes of burning hot seed had coated her. Everywhere the monster’s cum had gone from cream to pearly gel was now dried in a thick, clinging layer that refused to crumble or flake.
Groaning, sore from nipples to toenails, she tried to brush it off and found it stubborn enough to pull at her skin.
A stark reminder of what she’d done. How far she’d fallen.
She couldn’t bring herself to look.
